Creating socio-legal conversations about justice – Methods and Mobilization –

Law and society scholars, generally, are engaged across a variety of contemporary contexts with systems of power and inequality in society. Patterns of colonisation, structures of racial and gender inequality, for example, challenge law and society scholars to produce knowledge that contributes positively to larger struggles for social and political justice. Traditional methods of scholarship too often risk failing to produce research meaningful to these struggles. Law and society practice often focuses on impact and change (e.g. community legal clinics and cause lawyering), and while much law and society work engages with communities (e.g. migrant workers, post-conflict societies, LGBTQi folks, sex workers), community-engaged research as a methodology of socio-legal work is not too often adequately reflected on. Community-based and responsive scholarship is an obvious focus for more diverse, creative, and sustained study.

This Workshop brings together international scholars at the IISL to critically interrogate PAR and socio-legal activist research. We have gathered a remarkable group of researchers: five doctoral students, two postdoctoral fellows, emerging scholars, senior scholars. Participants come from Australia, Canada, Columbia, DR Congo, France, Indonesia, Musqueam First Nation, Nuxalk Nation, Peru, Puerto Rico, Uganda and the United States. The work of the group convened for the Workshop is diverse and exciting, drawing on different strands of the PAR tapestry (Indigenous, critical race, anti-colonial or feminist). All are animated by commitment to collaboration, social justice, and community benefits. Critically, our group includes Indigenous scholars allowing contemplation of Indigenous research as a critical lens.